August 24th, 2011 at 10:04AM
hmmyeswellmaybe: How can something spread like wildfire ‘in recent DECADES’ if ‘new shared media’ is the cause? The third sentence is garbage too and poorly written - ironically. Nevertheless - ‘on accident’? What?! Descriptivism isn’t about how you feel about English; it simply reflects how you use it. You can’t stop languages from changing. Samuel Johnson produced A Dictionary of the English Language, the longest and most extensive dictionary until the OED came out 173 years later, and he almost didn’t bother to finish it because during the process he’d thought one of the purposes of the dictionary was to fix the language, pin it down, so that it wouldn’t change, and he realized that that was impossible. The language had changed even from the time he started the book until he finished it. Languages don’t stop changing until people stop speaking them. In my personal life I say “by accident,” but that’s neither here nor there. I just like talking about prescriptivism vs descriptivism.

hmmyeswellmaybe:

How can something spread like wildfire ‘in recent DECADES’ if ‘new shared media’ is the cause? The third sentence is garbage too and poorly written - ironically.

Nevertheless - ‘on accident’? What?!

Descriptivism isn’t about how you feel about English; it simply reflects how you use it. You can’t stop languages from changing. Samuel Johnson produced A Dictionary of the English Language, the longest and most extensive dictionary until the OED came out 173 years later, and he almost didn’t bother to finish it because during the process he’d thought one of the purposes of the dictionary was to fix the language, pin it down, so that it wouldn’t change, and he realized that that was impossible. The language had changed even from the time he started the book until he finished it. Languages don’t stop changing until people stop speaking them.

In my personal life I say “by accident,” but that’s neither here nor there. I just like talking about prescriptivism vs descriptivism.

(via mintarr)

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    duly noted, sir.
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    These are pretty neat, yo.
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    Cannot STAND this....to correct my sisters, and it kills me.
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  29. poliorketes reblogged this from deusvolt and added:
    Agreed, I’m not...txt speak etc. etc. but languages change and
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    What a dickish way to describe descriptivism “Prescriptive Grammar: Language as a tool of communication? Forget that,...
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    Descriptivism isn’t about how you feel about English; it simply reflects how you use it. You can’t stop languages from...
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3,309 notes Source: distorte #grammar#prescriptive grammar#descriptive grammar#prescriptivism#descriptivism
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